


Don’t Be Afraid

by emptypockets



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, and the doctor saves her fresh out of the “this is going to hurt” scene, but she almost does, i just can’t stop thinking about it, that hasn’t happened yet, yaz does NOT get turned into a cyberman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22950274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emptypockets/pseuds/emptypockets
Summary: Yaz inhales sharply as she feels cold pressure on the skin at her temples, and she regretfully discovers, she’s never experienced true fear before.-“You want to save your friends so badly? Then do it yourself. Better be quick.”
Comments: 6
Kudos: 97





	Don’t Be Afraid

**Author's Note:**

> I had to spit this out before the finale airs.

Yaz would consider herself to be brave, or at least, excellent at pretending to be - which is just as good. Still gets the job done. She’s grown increasingly confident in herself and her abilities as time has gone on, to Yaz’s considerable relief, but there’s still a fair heap of occasions in which she’s solely relying on a straight face, false bravado, and a bite to her words. 

None of which, are effective defense against a Cyberman. She learned that the hard way. 

Now, she’s being marched between two of them, and Yaz can feel the coolness of their metal grip on her shoulders through the fabric of her jacket; the bruises they’re creating and worsening beneath rock-solid fingers. 

She knows not to run, because they’ll catch her. She knows not to fight, because they’ll kill her. She’s dead either way, unless there are some unexpected and untold developments on the way, but even if marching herself willingly onward is only granting Yaz mere minutes on her lifespan, she’ll take it. 

She holds her head high as if to prove she’s not afraid, though she knows it makes zero difference and likely goes entirely unnoticed. 

The Cyberman on her left breaks away when they reach a closed door, and when he resecures Yaz’s arm after opening it, she doesn’t flinch. 

If Yaz is going to die, then she hasn’t managed to process it yet. It’s a bit difficult to, given the fast pace of one life-threatening scenario to the next, and maybe that’s why the fear coiling in her stomach is so manageable. Almost irrelevant. 

Somehow, there’s a chunk of her that can’t help but wholeheartedly believe that she’s going to make it out alive, because she’s got a great track record so far, and the Doctor is usually right around the corner by this point. 

When the doors part all the way and Yaz sees the Doctor’s previous description of a conversion unit; outside of her imagination and  _ right  _ in front of her eyes, whatever was holding her fear at bay breaks open like a dam. 

“No.” She refuses, she fights back, she digs her heels into the ground as the Cybermen force her forward regardless. “ _ No. _ ” 

“ _ Do not be afraid. You will feel no fear. You will become like us. _ ” 

“No!” Yaz cries out as their fingers dig deeper into her skin but doesn’t let the pain deter her. She struggles, she kicks, she screams, she gives them no option but to drag her body across the room, and manhandle it into the chair. 

As she’s trying to lurch herself upward, her wrists are pinned and clasped into place. The Cybermen miss her recoiling legs a couple times before they’re secured as well, and Yaz goes still with the numbness of dread. 

Her breaths are coming quick and shallow as she watches them, looming over her like a nightmare at the foot of her bed.  _ God,  _ she wishes she were home in bed right now, trapped in some sick dream. 

Yaz inhales sharply as she feels cold pressure on the skin at her temples, and she regretfully discovers, she’s never experienced true fear before. 

* * *

The Master snaps his fingers, and the beams of pulsing light surrounding the Doctor disintegrate. Her eyes snap open at the same time that she sucks in a long breath, and promptly falls to her knees. 

The Master moves closer to her pitiful form with slow, timed steps, the heels of his shoes scraping dramatically against the floor before he slows to a stop, hands clasped behind his back and satisfyingly towering above her. 

She’s an absolute wreck, and it’s quite the sight. The Doctor’s sitting on her heels, shoulders hunched and body trembling viciously. She bows in on herself, after a moment, a low cry of that  _ beautiful  _ agony slipping through gritted teeth as she drops her forehead to closed fists that twitch against the dusty stone floor. 

The Master can’t help the pleasant shiver that runs through him at the image, and he bounces in place a couple times, shaking it out and grounding himself. His lips split into a grin, ever growing, as the Doctor’s hands slide into her hair. 

“I did say it was going to hurt.” He says it as patronizingly as possible, keeping his voice steady despite the sheer glee fizzing through his blood. He turns heel smoothly and steps away from her then, hands twisting in each other behind his back. “Though mind you, I think you took it a _tad_ harder than I did.” He faces her again, releasing one hand to pinch his fingers close together, grimacing dramatically. “Just a tad.” 

The Doctor shakily forces both hands beneath her body and sits herself up, one hand remaining on the floor for balance as she tilts her head back slightly to meet his eye. 

Oh,  _ there  _ it is.  _ There’s  _ that look he’s been waiting for - the one that can turn armies, the one that can burn across the stars and inspire tales of gods, strike paralyzing dread into the hearts of it’s receiving end. He hasn’t seen it in a  _ long _ time, and something about witnessing it after all this time swells a sense of victory in his chest. 

He’s broken her. 

“Got you.” He says it with a smile. 

Her hooded eyes bore into his murderously and her hands begin to twitch with bubbling rage, and suddenly, the Master’s not sure whether that look is for the Time Lords, or himself. 

While he knows she’s incapacitated beyond much more than standing, he doesn’t have time for one of her tantrums right now. He slips his hand deep in his coat pocket to retrieve a teleport bracelet, and he lunges forward to snap it around her wrist. 

The Doctor weakly yanks her hand away, but the Master’s quick, catching her wrist in a relentless grip as he bends down to her level. Face right in front of hers, noses nearly touching, he holds her red rimmed eyes and hisses, “You want to save your friends so badly?” 

Her eyes widen and she stops struggling for a moment, but there’s a hopelessness still palpable through his hold on her wrist. 

His eyes glimmer challengingly. “Then do it yourself.” 

The Master presses a button on the teleport band, and with a zap of white and yellow the Doctor flashes out of sight. “Better be quick.” 

* * *

Yaz has closed her eyes long before the blades free themselves from their compartment in the ceiling. She might be able to give herself the illusion of peace, if she concentrates, which is difficult with the deadly sound of scraping metal overhead and the hum of electricity encapsulating her senses. 

She tries hard, in these few seconds, to make peace with the fact that she’s actually, truly about to die. 

And she can’t, because this isn’t death, not really. 

Her eyes crack open to see the Cybermen standing at her feet, still, needless, watching to make sure everything goes correctly. 

This is going to be so much worse than death, and Yaz desperately hopes she doesn’t feel anything on the other side. 

She closes her eyes again and tries to take in a deep breath, and it’s shaky and hitched. She’s terrified _. She doesn’t want this.  _

There’s the sound of an intense buzz that floods Yaz’s senses for a moment, separate from the sizzle of electricity in her ears, and when her eyes open to investigate the colors of the chamber are still stabilizing their contrast.

The only thing that could possibly distract Yaz from her final breaths is now mere paces away. 

The Doctor struggles to sit up, eyes closed and brow pinched. When she opens them they fail to focus, drifting aimlessly across the space in front of her, and she makes no move towards Yaz’s rescue. 

“Doctor!” She shouts, the cacophony of fear and surprise causing her voice to strain and crack. Yaz doesn’t look above her, even as her time grows shorter. “ _ Doctor! _ ”

There’s no snap to attention, no sudden sign that she’s come back to her senses, but the Doctor lifts wide, glassy eyes in her direction. “Yaz?” 

The Cybermen start towards the Doctor, each with an arm extended as they scan her. 

“Doctor!” 

“ _ You are the Doctor. You will be deleted. _ ” 

The Doctor’s breathless before she’s even standing, pitching her weight in the direction of the control panel, falling onto the off switch with trembling hands white-knuckled around it. 

Yaz pants and quakes as the blades overhead still to a stop, inches from her face, and the restraints around her wrists and ankles loosen with a click.

The heavy thud of metal boots against metal floor doesn’t allow her a moment to recover, and Yaz draws her eye forward to see the Cybermen rapidly approaching the Doctor, and the Doctor making no move away from them. 

Yaz’s legs feel numb and detached when she slides out of the contraption. She’s cold, her heart feels like it’s going a mile a minute, and some educated voice in the back of her head tells her she’s in shock, and that her body needs to recover. 

But the Cybermen have their arms extended again, guns trained on the Doctor’s bowed head as she steadies her swaying with one hand against the controls. 

Yaz summons whatever scraps of adrenaline she’s got left, and surges forward in two quick strides to sweep the Doctor out of the line of fire in the nick of time. 

She finds herself solely responsible for propelling the both of them out the door. The Doctor moves her feet to follow, but Yaz reckons if she were to drop her arm from around her waist the Doctor would stop in place. 

Yaz breaks away, braces her shoulder against the door to force it closed and turns back to the Doctor to fish her sonic out of her coat. Even at the close proximity, there’s radio silence on the Doctor’s end, and so far Yaz hasn’t found the time to be properly worried. 

_ Point and think,  _ she remembers the simple instructions clearly, and does exactly that. The blue light on the lock on the door dims to nothing, severing it’s connection and the Cybermen’s ability to unlock it. For the moment, at least. 

The Doctor speaks, finally, and Yaz feels like she’s being seen for the first time. “Graham?” 

“Safe, I think.” Yaz gently grabs hold of her arm and guides her forward, trying to hurry both of their exhausted shuffles. “I saw him get away when the Cybermen broke in, and I don’t think they saw him.” 

The Doctor dips her head ever so slightly to show she’s heard her, and keeps it there, staring at the floor as they stumble through the corridor. Now that Yaz isn’t distracted by her own impending demise, she notices that the Doctor is shaking like a leaf under her hand. Her skin’s a bit grey, and her eyes are something incomprehensible. There’s not a scratch on her, but she looks like she’s been through the wars. 

She’s also staggering every couple of steps, and the weakness Yaz feels trying to tug her own body down to the floor makes her aware that she won’t be able to catch the Doctor if she falls. 

There’s an ajar door coming up on their left, and when they reach it Yaz peers through the opening to find it empty, save for a few discarded and mostly non threatening bits of cyberwear. 

The gap is wide enough for the both of them to squeeze through one at a time, so Yaz doesn’t risk making unnecessary noise by opening it further. She leads them far enough to one side that they can’t be seen from the corridor outside, and releases the Doctor. 

Yaz leans back against the harshly cool wall of the chamber and feels the final fragments of her energy sap out all at once. She exhales long and heavy and drops, gracelessly, and can’t help the breathless chuckle that escapes her lips as her backside hits the floor. 

She closes her eyes, takes another deep breath, and another after that. 

_ She’s alive.  _

She hears a soft landing nearby, and before she’s opened her eyes there are two small, cool hands gripping hers. 

The Doctor somehow looks much older than she did when Yaz left her earlier in the day, enough that Yaz considers the possibility that she actually is. She does have a time machine, after all, is she from a future where Yaz didn’t survive? Had she come back to rescue her? 

Yaz is transfixed by those ancient, frighteningly dull eyes for a moment before she drops her gaze to the Doctor’s coat. There, just to the left of her hood, is the smudge of oil she’s branded earlier that morning whilst constructing their Cyberman defenses. This is the same Doctor she’d been with just  _ hours _ ago. 

“What happened?” Yaz looks into her eyes again, and sees them melt. 

The Doctor’s voice cracks like she’s about to cry, but the tears never leave her eyes. “Yaz… are you alright?” 

It’s the first proper acknowledgement of Yaz’s close call, as if she’s only just now caught up with events. Muscle acting ahead of mind, even if only slightly. 

“I’m alive.” She provides, turning her hands over so she can reciprocate the Doctor’s hold and squeeze her fingers. 

“Did they hurt you?” She’s much more anxious than usual, listless, like she’s not been put together properly. 

“A bit.” Yaz says truthfully, and using her hands alone she prompts the Doctor to ease from her hovering crouch to sit at Yaz’s side. “But I’m just… reeling a little, I’ll be alright.” 

The Doctor does as she’s wordlessly instructed, sagging heavily into the wall at her back and head dropping against it with a thud. 

Yaz allows her to get swept up in herself for a moment, breathing through something invisible, and Yaz inches her hand over to rest on the Doctor’s wrist. 

“I won’t ask you again what happened.” The trembling hasn’t ceased, though Yaz isn’t sure which one of them it’s coming from. Probably both. “But are you okay?” 

The Doctor swallows dryly, staring straight ahead, and her hand twitches under Yaz’s fingers. “No.” 

The lack of hesitation in the uncharacteristically honest answer is almost as much of a shock to the system as her surprise appearance minutes previous. 

Yaz just closes her hand around the Doctor’s, stilling restless fingers, and nods respectfully. “Okay.” 

The Doctor takes a deep breath, concentrating hard on a spot on the wall opposite, jaw clenched and teeth gritted. Her next breath hitches, but the following is steadier. She’s trying to ground herself. 

Yaz gives her hand one more attentive squeeze, in case it helps. “We need to find Graham.” 

The Doctor nods, and repeats. “We need to find Graham.” 

She wants to ask about Ryan, but is a bit fearful about how that might affect the Doctor’s current state of mind if the answer isn’t good news. 

Yaz doesn’t have the space for any bad news, at the moment. They need to find Graham and get out. 

“You ready?” 

The Doctor nods slightly, but doesn’t move to get up until Yaz does first. When she does, it’s slow in her struggle to find the will to move a single muscle. 

She looks frighteningly vacant, Yaz realizes. No urgency to her step, no true recognition of the stakes apparent on her face. 

Yaz takes her hand when they step back into the corridor, and keeps her close, holds her pieces together, blissfully unaware of just how desperately it’s needed. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I’m not ready for this episode 
> 
> Comments appreciated :)


End file.
